Description: “Food Rescue Hero” Joey stationed at the Food Share cart at Sequoia Elementary / Photo credit: StopWaste
At the end of a lunch period in an Oakland Unified School District dining hall, Sustainability Manager Nancy Deming is watching closely. Not just the line of students, but what happens after they’ve made their choices.
On this particular day, chicken sandwiches were on the menu. As lunch unfolded, about a third of students decided to place their sandwich on a cart, where food can be reclaimed by other Oakland students during their lunch window.
By the end of the meal service, none were left.
Nothing was thrown away for this meal. Instead, those sandwiches moved through a system Nancy has spent years refining and championing; one designed to strive to catch surplus food at every stage and redirect it to where it can still be used.
That moment reflects only a glimpse into all that happens before and after food is swapped among students in the cafeteria. After 17 years working across school nutrition, waste prevention, and food recovery, Nancy knows there is no single fix.
Feeding students well while minimizing waste means balancing many contributing factors; nutrition requirements, student preferences, operational realities, and cost within the realities of running a large meal service operation, where some surplus is inevitable.
School meal programs are designed to ensure they have enough food for every student who comes through the line to receive a meal. At the same time, they are working to order and prepare as close to actual counts as possible. In practice, that could mean ordering about 10 percent extra and in some cases, even more when waste prevention systems are not yet in place.
“We’re working to bring that margin closer to 3 percent, and from there, we strive to rescue that food to help feed others,” explained Nancy. “We focus on a number of strategies including reducing orders of items that are not reclaimed by students and can’t be reused in the meal program. I’ve also been trying to shift how we talk about waste prevention by reframing this term to ‘food optimizing’ and taking a more positive, holistic approach.”
Nancy approaches food waste prevention as a series of decision points across the entire lifecycle of a meal. First, there’s menu planning and forecasting: identifying which foods are actually resonating with students and adjusting accordingly. Then, there’s the cafeteria itself, where the Food Share station, a more visible intervention, comes into play.
Many schools across California have now set up a Food Share station in a prominent spot in the cafeteria. The station typically includes carts, bins and custom signage inviting students to drop off any unopened or untouched items that were provided on their plate but they don’t plan to eat. While students are encouraged to eat what they can, especially fruit, which can be taken outside or saved for later, any items that aren't eaten are made available for other students to choose from during the same meal period.
“It used to be one bin, making use of milk crates, kind of unorganized, and just about impossible to see what was inside with students digging to find a wanted item,” Nancy recalls. “Now it’s structured so you can see what’s there. It’s easier for students to use and easier for the kitchen staff to keep food items organized and efficiently wheel it back to the kitchen when it’s time to sort and repurpose items.”
It’s not just about reducing waste. The station has become a point of access; an opportunity for students who want something different, or need a little more, to find it. It can be challenging to serve the preferences of some 35,000 students on a daily basis, but as the chicken sandwich example shows, even when a menu item doesn’t land with every student, it can still find its way to someone who might like to eat it.
Even with careful planning and an active Food Share system, some surplus remains.
Kitchen teams repurpose what they can based on what is allowed. Whole fruits, packaged fruits and vegetables, and shelf-stable items may be held for the next day’s meal service. But time and food safety guidelines create limits.
In addition to school meal serving surplus, sometimes, ordering or supply issues create unexpected surpluses, like a bulk cereal order that couldn’t be served due to dietary restrictions.
“There are moments where you know perfectly edible food won’t be used in the school meal program,” Nancy says. “That’s when it is so beneficial to have a food recovery system in place.”
Across the local schools Nancy supports in the Bay Area, when surplus food can’t be reserved for use in the meal program, she prioritizes rescuing this food for others to enjoy.
At Oakland Unified, this effort is supported through a partnership with Food Connect. The program currently serves four schools and is funded by StopWaste, a public agency of Alameda County. Food Connect drivers pick up surplus food from each of the 4 schools 3 days a week and as needed from the central kitchen warehouse.
“When staff at schools not yet in the program identify surplus that can’t be used on-site, that’s when we make an additional call to Food Connect,” explains Nancy, “Some items are easier to move than others like shelf-stable foods and packaged items. We also donate apples, bagels, and packaged carrots. With larger quantities, you’re kind of holding your breath hoping someone is available to move the food in time before it goes to waste.”
Food Connect helps turn that uncertainty into action by responding quickly, managing the logistics, and ensuring surplus food is directed to the right place while it’s still usable.
Since the fall of 2024, this partnership has helped recover and redistribute close to 60,000 pounds of food to local organizations including Planting Justice, Mary Barber Ministries, CityTeam, and nearby housing sites, reaching people who are often already connected to the district.
Oakland Unified is working toward a more centralized, scalable approach. Plans are underway to have food service department drivers collect the available surplus from the current four participating schools and return it to the central kitchen, where Food Connect can then coordinate pickups from one location rather than individual schools. As this model is tested, the goal is to expand beyond the current four schools to a district-wide system.
For Nancy, donation is not the end goal. It is a necessary step within a larger system that is still evolving.
Her ideal vision is one where surplus food remains within the school community itself, redistributed directly to students and families. But achieving that requires staffing, infrastructure, and oversight that many schools don’t yet have.
Until more capacity exists within schools, outside partners help fill that gap. Even with limits on how surplus food can be repurposed, there are other programs and partnerships that help increase food access for students.
Community Kitchens Oakland, a nonprofit that prepares and distributes culturally relevant meals, partners with Oakland Unified to provide snacks in community spaces for students experiencing housing instability and delivering meals for weekend sports practices. Food Connect helps move the food from where it’s prepared to where it’s needed, connecting different parts of the system so students can access food in more places outside of the school day.
In practice, decisions about how food is shared, moved, and recovered are shaped by a mix of national, state and local requirements, which can either support or limit what schools and districts are able to do.
At the state level, California’s SB 1383 requires entities—including school districts—to separate waste streams and recover and donate the maximum amount of edible food. The policy has helped elevate food recovery as a priority and created a framework for accountability.
But it hasn’t come with dedicated funding, and implementation varies widely across counties. School districts, in particular, operate in a complex regulatory environment where federal, state, and local guidelines intersect.
“Systems change takes time,” Nancy says. “There are a lot of regulations, engagement, capacity, and safety protocols, and not all of them align nor at the same time, it takes much patience and perseverance to stay at it.”
Still, she sees policy as a critical lever. Even imperfect requirements can push districts to invest in new systems, build partnerships, and rethink long-standing practices.
The work happening across Oakland Unified reflects a broader reality: even with thoughtful planning and strong systems in place, some surplus is inevitable. What matters is having the right strategies in place to respond when it does.
For those supporting this work, that means looking across the many layers of what Nancy describes as “food optimizing,” to identify where impact can be made.
Investing focused time in preventative practices, including better forecasting, more flexible systems, and stronger alignment across policy and practice, can reduce how much surplus is created in the first place. At the same time, strengthening redistribution systems ensures food can move quickly and reach people in its best condition to be enjoyed.
Both are essential. One meets the moment. The other builds toward a system that works better from the start.
To learn more about reducing and recovering surplus food, check out these resources:
This story was developed with input and permission from Nancy Deming with Oakland Unified School District.
4/30/2026
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